Australian Journal of Business and Management Research Vol.2 No.

09 [26-30] | December-2012

ISSN: 1839 - 0846

INFORMATION REQUIREMENTS IN THE SELECTION OF INDONESIAN HIGHER EDUCATION

INSTITUTIONS: EVIDENCE FROM EDUCATION EXPO VISITORS

Arif Hartono
Management Department, Faculty of Economics
Islamic University of Indonesia (UII)
arif.hartono@uii.ac.id

ABSTRACT

This study examines the required information and its importance that used by visitors of an education expo to
select Indonesian higher education (HE) institutions. The visitors were dominated by the final year students of
high schools that are located in the city of Jakarta, Indonesia. The study also investigates preferred promotional
tools considered effective by the visitors that influence their choice of Indonesian HE institutions. The results
indicated that the top three (in order) of the required information that used by the visitors to select Indonesian HE
institutions were scholarships offered, teaching quality and faculty accreditation. Teaching quality, faculty
accreditation and scholarship were the top three factors (in order) to be perceived importance by the visitors in
the choice of Indonesian HE institutions. Regarding, HE promotional tools considered the most effective that
influenced the visitors in selecting Indonesian HE institutions were national television, university presentation
and university website. The study results provide important insight for policy makers in Indonesian HE
institutions to develop marketing strategy, particularly the strategy related to recruitment and advertising, due to
the visitors are potential students of Indonesian HE institutions.

Keywords: required information, selection, higher education, Indonesia

1. INTRODUCTION
Globally higher education (HE) institutions face challenges such as intensifying global competition, declining
funding and changing demand patterns (Gibbs, Habeshaw & Yorke 2008; Jarvis 2000; Veloutsou, Lewis & Paton
2004). For examples, Soutar & Turner (2002) described significant changes of tuition fees policy in Australias
tertiary education sector, government subsidies fees have been replaced by full cost fees at the postgraduate levels.
In US, students opportunities to go to colleges are increase; however the competition to recruit more students and
to retain them has become more severe (Domino et al. 2006). In developing countries context, for example in
Malaysia, many universities experience an increasing competition among them (Ming, 2010). In Indonesia, HE
strategy has been reformed by implementing HE institutional autonomy and accountability (Kusumawati et al.
2010). The impact of the reform has granted full autonomy to well-established public universities.

From HE institutions point of view, understanding required information used by students to select HE will
provide important insight to develop marketing decisions. St. John, Paulsen & Carter (2005) argue that knowing
students and parents expectation is one of the effective ways for higher education institutions to face the highly
competitive new environment. Understanding institutional factors that affect students decision to select colleges
become an important part of marketing strategy planning that related to recruitment strategy (Ming, 2010).
Therefore, the factors used by students to evaluate and select a university have changed as well as the used of
marketing techniques to recruit potential students of higher education has become increasingly important.

From students point of view, decision to attend a university can be classified as a high involvement decision and
it needs the right and sufficient information to guide their decisions. Veloutsou, Lewis & Paton (2004) stated that
decision to select a university is a difficult task for pupils due to such decision often affects their future life path.
Domino et al. (2006) added that the decision is important for students due to education from universities will
significantly influence students whole life, therefore students and parents are very serious and careful when
selecting a university to attend.

Taking the above into consideration, the present study focused on identification of the information requirements
and its importance that used by visitors of an education expo in the city of Jakarta, Indonesia to select higher
education institutions. In addition, the study also investigated what marketing communication tools that are
considered effective and can be accessed and reached easily by potential students of HE institutions. Data of the
study was obtained from the visitors of the annual education expo that was held in Jakarta, the capital city of

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Australian Journal of Business and Management Research Vol.2 No.09 [26-30] | December-2012

ISSN: 1839 - 0846

Indonesia from 16-19 February 2012. Visitors of the education expo were dominated by high school students from
various high schools that are located in Jakarta. Most of them were in the final year of their study.

Research questions that were addressed in this study: (1) what is the required information used by the education
expo visitors to select an Indonesian HE institution? (2) what is the degree of importance of the required
information that influence the education expo visitors in selecting an Indonesian HE institution? (3) what are the
preferred promotional tools for the education expo visitors that influenced their choice of HE institutions?

The present study seeks to achieve the following objectives: (1) determining the required information when the
education expo visitors are selecting an Indonesian HE institution; (2) investigating the degree of importance of
the required information that used by the education expo visitors to select an Indonesian HE institution; (3)
determining preferred promotional tools for the education expo visitors that influenced their choice of Indonesian
HE institutions.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. Required Information & Its Importance
Soutar & Turner (2002) surveyed determinants of university preferences for Western Australia school-leavers by
using conjoint analysis. The analysis employed in order to investigate the relative importance of a number of
attributes to school-leavers choice of university. Soutar & Turner (2002) divided the attributes into two
categories, namely university related factors and personal factors. The university related factors are the type of
course, the academic reputation of the institution, the campus, the quality of the teaching staff and the type of
university. The personal factors are distance from home, what family of high school leavers thinks about each
university and what university of high school leavers friends wishes to attend. They found that four most
important determinants were course suitability, academic reputation, job prospects and teaching quality. The
studys findings can be used by universities marketing managers to determine target groups who can be attracted
to higher education institutions, as well as to provide insights into marketing strategies in recruiting prospective
students.

Veloutsou, Lewis & Paton (2004) conducted a study aims to identify required information that high school
students expect and require when evaluating and selecting a higher education institution and to assess the relative
importance of the various information items. In their study, they employed both qualitative and quantitative
studies. They used factor analysis to identify groups of items describing the same dimension of required
information. Based on the factor analysis, there were nine specific areas with students require information items,
namely local infrastructure, local social life, career prospects, universitys infrastructure, universitys social life,
business contracts, universitys reputation, course studied, and campus. The study result showed that the most
important information that the participants seek were the university reputation, courses and campus.

Briggs (2006) investigated factors that influence undergraduate students of higher education in six Scottish
universities. He identified ten influencing factors, namely academic reputation, distance from home location, own
perception, graduate employment, social life nearby, entry requirements, teaching reputation, quality of the
faculty, information supplied by university and research reputation. The top three of the influencing factors were
academic reputation, distance from home and location.

Yamamoto (2006) investigated important factors for evaluation and selection of a university in Turkey by using
questionnaire method to determine the factors. He found several factors that influence students decision to select
and evaluate a university namely personal preference, parents, university entrance exam scores, university
ranking, advisors and friends.

Ho & Hung (2008) studied the marketing mix formulation for higher education and they identified fourteen
factors perceived by high students to select a university. They categorized the factors into five groups, namely
living (location, convenience, and campus), learning (faculty, curriculum and research), reputation (academic
reputation and alumni reputation), economy (tuition fee, subsidies and employability) and strategy (exam
subjects, exam pass rate, and graduation requirements). Students perceived five factors as the most important
factors, namely employability, curriculum, academic reputation, faculty, and research environment.

The recent study conducted by Kusumawati, Yanamandram & Perera (2010) explores the factors that influence
student choice in the selection of Indonesian Public Universities. In their preliminary research, they conducted an
exploratory study that consist of 48 semi-structured interviews and focus group discussion (FGD) with first-year
undergraduate students in the five public universities in Java and Sumatera Island. The interview results showed
that factors used by higher education students to evaluate and select higher education institution were similar to

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ISSN: 1839 - 0846

previous studies in other countries. There were 25 emerging factors from their preliminary study. Of the 25
emerging factors, three were key drivers when selecting a higher education institution, namely cost, reputation and
proximity. The other influencing factors were job prospect, parents, and quality.

Based on the literature review discussed above, it is can be summarized that: (1) some influencing factors will be
more important than others; (2) participants in previous studies from various countries exhibited many similar
responses when choosing a university.

2.2. HE Promotional Tools

Bonnema & Van der Waldt (2008) argued that promotional tools in HE also have changed along with the changes
in HE landscape and therefore marketers in HE institutions need to evaluate their marketing communication
practices if they want to satisfy the need of information of their potential markets. They added that HE institutions
need to consider marketing communication strategies that able to address the heterogeneous of HEs target
markets. HE promotional tools such as campus visit programs, use of media mix magazine and newspaper
advertising, radio/TV/cable advertising, web/internet, special events, direct mail, donor relations, alumni
relations, view books, telemarketing, and high school relations affect students choices of particular HE
(Al-Hawary & Batayneh, 2010).

Abrahamson (2000) noted that there was shifting in the use of printed advertisement to the web in order to reach
students way of communication. Furthermore, image, information and accuracy of web pages can be easily
monitored and maintained. He added that traditional methods of communication are too slow for the generation;
therefore HE needs to shift the methods. Brown & Hoyt (2003) revealed that web as a major of source of
information affects university choice. Marketing media and communication technologies such as internet, www,
email, and chat rooms are considered as reliable ways for colleges and universities to offer information to students
in the various phases of the recruitment and selection process (Williams, 2000). The question remains as to which
advertising tools that provides the greatest impact to students choice of particular Indonesian HE institutions?

3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.1. Data Collection, Sampling and Instrument
This study was supported and funded by the oldest private university in Indonesia that joined in the 2012 annual
education expo that was held in the city of Jakarta, Indonesia from 16-19 February 2012. Data were collected from
the visitors of the education expo by employing questionnaires. This study employed purposive sampling to
collect information from the visitors who visited the universitys stand expo. Souvenirs were provided by the
university in order to increase the response rate. In the last day of the education expo, a total of 100 completed and
usable questionnaires successfully collected.

The questionnaire consists of four section; (1) participants profile, (2) required information that used by
participants to evaluate and to select HE, (3) the perceived importance of the required information, (4) HE
promotional tools. Relevant required information that students searched for and expected when they evaluate and
select HE was compiled based on the literature presented earlier in this paper. Participants were asked to assess a
list of 22 items of the required information (1=strongly disagree, 5=strongly agree) and to reveal the perceived
importance of the required information when they select HE (1=very unimportant, 5=very important).
Subsequently, participants were asked to select one of ten HE promotional tools that influent students selection of
the HE.

3.2. Data Analysis

Descriptive statistics was employed in order to facilitate the description and summarization of collected data. The
participants profile section consist the following information: gender, age, types of high school, the students
grade, and destination city to study. In addition, cronbachs alpha was used in order to measure internal
consistency reliability of the constructs measured. Factor analysis was used to identify groups of item describing
the same dimension of required information. The factor analysis approach that was used in this study was the
principal component. In such approach, the total variance in the data is considered (Malhotra, 2007). A general
rule of thumb, all factors with eigenvalues greater than one is reported.

4. FINDINGS
Cronbachs alpha value was 0,964 which means that the required information internaly consistent. Based on the
descriptive statistics, the profile of the participants were: gender (24% men and 76% women), age (100% in the
range 16-20 years old), types of high school (69% state high schools and 31% private high schools), the students
grade (99% in the 3rd grade/final year, 1% in the 2nd grade) and the top three of destination cities to study were
Jakarta (55%), Yogyakarta (27%) and Bandung (9%).

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Australian Journal of Business and Management Research Vol.2 No.09 [26-30] | December-2012

ISSN: 1839 - 0846

The results indicated that the top three (in order) of the required information that used by the visitors to select an
Indonesian HE were scholarships offered, teaching quality and faculty accreditation. Teaching quality, faculty
accreditation and scholarship were the top three factors (in order) to be perceived importance by the visitors in the
choice of an Indonesian HE. While, HE promotional tools considered the most effective that influenced the
visitors to select an Indonesian HE were national television, university presentation and university website.

Factor analysis showed that three factors emerged out of 22 original factors with the following total eigenvalues
12,328; 1,277 and 1,198. The first factor consists of 16 factors associated with institution accreditation and offers.
The second factor related to accommodation and living cost that consist of 3 factors. Lastly, two factors loaded to
be a factor that related to institution reputation.

5. CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS

Based on the findings above, lesson learned from the study can be discussed. As the competition in recruiting
potential students from wide range of background is increased, it is important for policy makers of HE institutions
to employ marketing practices to win the competition. The policy makers must understand what the information
that required by the potential students in the selection of HE. In addition, understanding the knowledge related to
the importance of the required information need to be taken into consideration. It is believed that such
understanding can be used to develop marketing strategy related to profiling, targeting and recruiting potential
students.

Marketing communication in the context of HE also has an important role. HEs policy makers need to understand
what the promotional tools that effectively reaches the potential students as well as positively influence them in
the selection of HE. Based on the studys result, national television, university presentation and university website
considered as the effective promotional tools that can be used in the recruitment strategy. Regarding the use of
internet as the HE promotional tool, the study result was in line with the previous studies presented in the literature
review.

Lastly, limitations of the study need to be acknowledged. First, generalization of the studys result needs to be
considered due to the use of convenience sampling. Therefore, in the future study, non-probability sampling
methods is suggested to be employed. Second, the study was conducted in the capital city of Indonesia; therefore
the result might be will be different if the study conducted in rural areas. In the future study, a comparison study
can be conducted in order to portray different insight from students in urban and rural areas. Finally, updating of
the insight related to required information and its importance cannot be gained from this study due to the use of
one-shot or cross-sectional study. It is recommended for HEs policy makers to conduct the study regularly,
therefore the update of what the required information and effective HE promotional tools that influence the choice
of HE can be obtained.

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